... a miscellaneous hodgepodge of various thoughts, loosely held together by the fact that they're all emanating from a single mind. A lighthearted look at the world, a great place to waste a moment or two of your life.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Ain't technology grand?

I just loaded the Alabama Driver's Manual on my just-turned-15 son's Nook Color. Ain't technology grand? (And I'm telling you all about it via a web log, or blog, as I sit on my back patio, typing away on a tiny little keyboard on a handheld computer known as a smart phone.) I recall having to go get a physical copy of the driver's manual from the DMV's brick and mortar building when I was ready to study for my learner's permit. And I recall the "early days" of e-mail, or "electronic mail," as I was in school (college) in Worcester, MA, and connected my computer (via a 9600 baud modem over a phone line, which tied up the phone in my dorm room and would get interrupted if someone called unless you dialed *70, to turn off call waiting, before dialing out) to a local "Bulletin Board System" (or "BBS") and could then e-mail my aunt at UAB in Birmingham, which she would receive within a day or so.

And my youngest sons are watching "old episodes" (things we'd used to call "reruns") of Malcolm In the Middle (funny show, if perhaps inappropriate humor at times) "on demand" streaming from Netflix, where for $10/month you can have many shows or movies available on demand, waiting on you, instead of having to drive to the store to rent them, or plan your life around an HBO schedule, or wait until next week when the next episode airs on TV.

As a matter of fact, I currently work from home, connected to all my colleagues, scatered from Panama City to Huntsville to Texas to somewhere in Colorado, and we have regular weekly meetings that I attend on my computer, and the software I work on is hosted across the bay in Mobile, while I work on multiple virtual computers hosted on my laptop.